The term freelancer or freelance was first coined in the Medieval Age by Sir Walter Scott in Ivanhoe, while referring to “mercenary warriors”. Nevertheless, this term has acquired different meanings over time and nowadays one can easily associate it to the following definition: a person who pursues a profession without establishing a long-term commitment to any employer (overseas or within the country).
The phenomenon of the Globalization in which the World Wide Web can be located also brought something new to this term’s definition, since a freelance worker no longer deals with geographical constraints. It is then possible to freelance without being physically present: the freelancer can work to a one-time employer living overseas still they are only a click away.
As freelancers became more and more dependant on the Internet, and western companies increased outsourcing, virtual marketplaces such as GetACoder (www.getacoder.com) started coming into light. GetACoder.com brings together hundreds of employers and freelancers from all over the world, who work on a per-project basis. This facilitator system accelerates the whole market process and provides key competitive advantages to both parties involved. It is a win-win situation both to employers and freelancers. Employers get good quality work at lesser costs and freelancers get paid a considerable amount for the project completed.
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Archive for the ‘Outsourcing’ Category
There are several European and US based IT companies that are increasingly opting for outsourcing. It has become a trend. The main reasons behind this move are cost reduction, flexibility and increase in productivity. Full time resources or dedicated IT staffing solutions, onshore and offshore, is being leveraged by several of these companies.
Dedicated full time IT staffing services work well for companies who need to scale up and down based on project requirements or those looking to complement their core team with quality IT professionals. Several companies even setup an offshore team together with the staffing firm. IT staffing services are of great value if done well with a right staffing partner.
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In a recent Accenture study, cultural issues were listed as one of the main reasons for problems in offshore outsourcing deals and over half of National Outsourcing Association (NOA) members surveyed recently also said cultural differences are still an issue in offshore outsourcing deals.
Two factors that are rarely present in any domestic projects, but cannot be avoided when going offshore, are geographical distance and cultural differences.
Geographical distance might be a factor in terms of unfavorable time zone differences but today most of the offshore service providers ensure that their business hours are adjusted to ensure that you have several hours of overlap per day in common.
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It may be expected, that as an entrepreneur, you wear many hats and do a lot of extra work to keep business steady. Like many small business owners, you may find yourself overwhelmed and stressed. Finding time to focus on your main priorities and projects may become difficult if you don’t have the help you need, which is why hiring a Virtual Assistant can be one of the best business decisions you can make.
Often, running your own business means taking on a lot of the administrative and marketing tasks yourself. Hiring someone on to assist with those tasks can be essential to the success of your company. Hiring full time, onsite staff however is not always feasible. Today many entrepreneurs work out of their homes and don’t have the space, resources or the funds to hire full time or even temporary staff.
Deciding to hire a Virtual Assistant can save you money often associated with onsite hiring staff, including taxes, holiday pay, benefits and additional equipment, as well as save you on office space.
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The distributed nature of accounts payable processes often requires approval on several levels, and generates huge volumes of documentation that are difficult to effectively manage. Not only does this increase the amount of time needed to process each invoice, but it also sets the stage for costs to spiral out of control. Because of this, AP processes are an ideal place to start as organizations look to strengthen controls, drive out costs, and increase efficiencies. This special report examines the key elements that are needed in a strategic solution to realize the full benefits from automating the accounts payable process.
Problems with Conventional Approaches
Many companies have tried and failed to achieve the full benefits of automating the accounts payable process because they’ve followed a conventional approach. Although it can claim business efficiencies, this approach invariably costs more than expected and delivers less than promised. It focuses on short term functional goals and tempts departmental managers to stray further and further from their core functions. What is needed is a systematic, strategic approach that takes paper out of the AP process.
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An answer center should be considered a partnership to help a business grow, and businesses use answer centers as an extension of their companies. Having an answer center gives a constant presence to your company, and allows more interaction with your customers. It also permits a consistent, prompt response for your customers’ needs. This results in improved satisfaction and retention of customers, and leads to increased revenues.
To make the best use of an answer center, ensure that they have a highly trained staff to represent your company well, and choose one with a reputation for having high quality and superior customer support. Initially, work closely with an answer center so they know your service needs and budget. Meet the staff and employees of an answer center who will be representing your company, and make sure they are well versed on your business so that they will portray an accurate image of your products and services.
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There are a number of companies doing the lead generation process and the fact is that call centers India use outsourced call centers for generating their leads so that they keep their front end professional sales busy through qualified sales leads. This lets the company focus more on the processing deals rather than the prospecting. This call center lead generation is not something new as the telephone invented several years ago is today a powerful tool than ever. However with the changing global economy most of the companies across America have been able to save several dollars by using call centers outsourcing services
The business process outsourcing lead generation is surely one the best ways to provide your front down sales team with some of the best daily leads. When you just compare the building cost of an in house telemarketing team that is complete with the call center infrastructure needed it would seem that BPO lead generation not just cuts the cost to 50 percent but is also saves up the time and money. Bringing over the training and managing team can be hard enough when you already have sales professionals and overall the telemarketers India would be right enough to outsource your lead generation to. Therefore the clear and the best way to optimize your sales cycle is to outsource the lead generation where you can also make sure that your sales team is spending their time being present with your company’s products or services for qualified prospects
Most organizations, understandably, develop tunnel vision at the beginning of their outsourcing journey when the prize is getting the right deal done. But what next? What happens when the ink is dry on the paper and clients can relax in the knowledge that they have negotiated a good value sustainable deal with a reliable supplier? The answer is – don’t relax. Translating that deal into successful day to day operational reality is vital from an organisational, and often personal, point of view. The current global economic downturn makes keeping transition costs to budget and realising the benefits of outsourcing even more important. And the cost of getting it wrong?
* Delayed transition to outsourced service
* Business case not achieved
* Increased cost and resource burden
* Poor client / supplier relationships
* End-users and stakeholders opposed to new ways of working
Experience shows that lack of strong and focused client-side transition management activity is a common contributing factor to deals which never got off the ground properly. Research shows that governance and relationship issues alone can account for a 40-50% value leakage on the average outsourcing contract (See Figure 1). Common symptoms are delayed transition, which erodes the business case, leads to messy and inconsistent communications and compromises ability to properly manage the people and processes involved in and impacted by the outsourcing initiative. Resources on both sides become stretched and liability for additional costs incurred tests relationships, often leading to a blame game. All of these things are real blocks to true realisation of both tangible and intangible benefits of the outsource engagement. You get one chance to lay the right foundations to prevent that value leakage from occurring – the transition phase.
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Multinational and global organizations are increasingly looking to utilize global HR Outsourcing (HRO) as a key strategy to deliver HR services across their entire global operation. Such organizations are likely to face the problem of the ‘‘Long Tail’’; whilst they may well have quite a few countries with scale – hundreds if not thousand employees in those countries – there will often be a long list of countries with relatively few employees where the value proposition for HRO is much less clear. There is no ‘silver bullet’ solution for the ‘Long Tail’, but consideration of the following nine rules will help organizations who are seeking the benefits of global HRO:
1. Match the HRO market to your particular ‘Long Tail’
Whilst there are global providers with operations in over 100 countries, buyers need to be aware that this presence may not extend to either current or future capability to provide the required HR services in all of those countries. At this point in time, many global service providers can realistically offer a broad range of services in at most 50 – 80 countries. ‘Top Tier’ HRO service providers can address this shortfall by acting as integrators of services, using local suppliers in ‘Long Tail’ countries. In these cases, client organizations need to be aware of the depth and breadth of the relationships between the integrator and the local suppliers, how process hand-offs will work and where responsibilities lie. Whether using direct capability, or through integrating local suppliers into the global delivery model, it is important to map the HRO service provider’s capability onto the organization’s actual need to see the art of the possible for global HRO.
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Software development companies today, provide post maintenance services to build up healthy relations and prove their efficiency to their clients. There are numerous custom software development companies in India, providing outsource asp.net development services. Going for outsourcing of .net development in India not only saves times for such enterprises but importantly, a significant amount of money as well. The trend is evident for the past few years now, as more and more companies are looking to outsource such services to India.
Companies in India has highly experienced team consists of experts specialized in every branch – Web Development, ASP.Net web Development, PHP web development, Mobile Development, J2ME Application Development. Their categorized web development portfolio will show you the wide range of their works that earned them applauds from their clients.
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